Nickel's worth of free advice: unless you know your album is so goddamn good that there isn't a critic alive that can accuse you of some kind of self-reflective irony, I would opt for a phrase other than "terminal boredom!" to be my anthemic rallying cry. It's not exactly the phrase you want lodged in the mind of the listener as he surveys your bleak and gravelly musical landscape. Unfortunately, that's precisely the chorus in the rollicking "Train from Terminal Boredom" that serves as the linchpin to a tune that fails the River-era Springsteen-ish roots rock to which the tune, along with much of Debt and Departure, aspires.

Debt and Departure isn't a case of terminal boredom, but rather of punctuated dullness. Former Grifter Dave Shouse and his associate Bastard Souls (including the gifted Michael Tighe, who did some notable guitar work on Jeff Buckley's stunning 1994 debut, Grace) simply make odd choices in their sound, a bizarre alteration of neglect and overcompensation. The album's standout is "Telegram," a sweet-natured folk-rock rambler brightened by splashes of organ and the warm yawn of a fiddle. Then, dead in the middle of this earthy shuffle, the Bastards insert these machine gun-like shots from the electric guitar. It was as if they realized that the song had no gimmick to prevent it from sitting comfortably among any of the wonderful numbers off, say, Wilco's Mermaid Avenue, and felt the spontaneous need to jack it up with a power riff.

The music on Debt and Departure is simply not comfortable in its own skin, so it never stops playing dress up. Occasionally, you'll hear the plaintive, earnest romantics that made Buckley's music so brilliant, as on "Up to You," but it seems to come off as insincere at best, or at times, unenthusiastic. "Remembering Sophie Rhodes" could be any number of John Cougar Mellencamp's soulful heartland tunes. And the Tex-Mex country-folk of the title track suggests a little Marty Robbins, and a lot of Chi-Chi's fajitas.

The musicians are all actually quite competent and seem to possess a successful chemistry when they can agree on a direction. But all said, too many debts and very little by way of departure.

-Brent S. Sirota